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When 3-year-old emails surfaced recently showing that Columbus City Schools
principals asked then-district data czar Steve Tankovich to retroactively withdraw students from
school, district officials called it old news.

Except for one thing: The emails are the only written mention of the practice of “breaking the
enrollment” of students ever made public.

It’s hard to run a large bureaucracy without putting instructions into writing. But Tankovich
and his co-workers somehow managed to communicate to about 300 principals and assistant principals
the off-the-books rule to withdraw kids who had been absent at least 10 consecutive days.
The Dispatch has asked since 2012 to see any written rules supporting the practice and has
received nothing back.

One of the newly emerged 2011 emails shows then-Leawood Elementary School Principal Annette
Tooman asking Tankovich on June 29 to withdraw a fifth-grader who had missed seven consecutive days
(not 10). The student had missed school back in November 2010, the email said.

This student and another fifth-grader “may need to have adjustments made to their attendance,”
Tooman noted in the email.

What’s that mean? The email never says, and Tankovich never asks. Tankovich never responded to
the emails but forwarded them to a data analyst without comment.

The data person never responded, either. It looks like, amazingly, everybody just kind of knew
what to do, no questions asked — at least not in writing.

• • •

Word had it that Todd Tuney doesn’t wear socks.

So when Columbus schools’ new communications chief came in for a recent meeting, Superintendent
Dan Good decided to walk Tuney’s walk. He skipped the socks.

It was a show of support, a cheeky nod to Tuney’s style. But it was a painful one, Good told the
Insider. He developed a wicked blister, he said, that only got worse after he went for a run.

Drake said he could easily think of a half-dozen or so “colleagues and leaders around the
country” who would make good candidates to succeed Dr. Steven Gabbe, who is leaving as chief of
Wexner Medical Center before the end of the year.

After a pause, he added, “I know, if I say something that is funny or clever, my wife told me
that’s all anyone would print, so I’m not thinking about my cousin.”

Many people can probably understand why Drake would be a little gun-shy with his humor. His
predecessor, E. Gordon Gee, left Ohio State after getting into hot water for making jokes at the
expense of Catholics and non-Big Ten athletic conferences.